Flying
by Femme Bono
Summary: Scott Favor sprouts wings. [This is one of my first forays into slash, so be kind.]
1. Chapter 1

**A/N: Short one to start, but once they get rolling, they're going places! It won't be smooth sailing of course, but Scott's finally dipped a toe out of the closet.**

Cht 1 Sprouting wings

His father accused him of many things while he was alive – slacker, disappointment, problem child. But no one could ever accuse Scott Favor of being a bad person. Or a horrible friend. He tried to distance himself, tried to run back to the safety net of home and propriety, to everything his upbringing afforded him. It took the two most important men in his life dying to finally shine a stark light on the fact that instead of running back home, he was running away from the real home he had come to know.

Scott could talk slicker than shit, Mikey said. He talked Carmella out of her pants, and then he talked her halfway across the world. He could talk anybody into anything, and thus he seemed destined for a life in politics just like his father. So he accepted his inheritance with grace, the proper amount of decorum and a tinge of remorse over his wild days. And then he secured himself the perfect trophy wife material. Because he knew he needed her to craft his new life, to leave the old one behind and go respectable. To _change, just when no one expected him to_. Yet watching the revelry of Bob's funeral contrast against his father's staid service left Scott wanting. And he knew why. He lay there that night next to her, feeling the press of her warm, nude body against his, and he could no longer deny that which he could not change. The thing he had always run from, the real reason he would never be his father's golden boy and why he rebelled so hard. Home was not here. And finding Mikey might not be easy.

* * *

Mike woke up in warmth, covered with a blanket in the backseat of a car. He wondered briefly if he had fallen asleep on a date, until he glanced up bleary-eyed to see the back of Scott's head over the front head rest. No longer did he dream of his mother cradling his head in her lap. Now it was Scott holding him, comforting him in his sleep; so when he awoke now, it left him wondering faintly if his dream had merely shifted to Scott driving him off into the sunset somehow, to safety.

He sucked in a breath, shifted, raising up and almost guiltily meeting Scott's eyes in the rearview mirror.

"Good morning, Sleeping Beauty," Scott quipped, trying to inject some humor into the situation. They hadn't seen each other for weeks, had not left on a good note. And he was not exactly sure how Mike would receive him.

"Tha fuck are you doing here?" He answered groggily, looking around at the scenery flashing by. "Where are we?"

"Headed south Mikey, headed south!" Scott smiled winningly, only faltering a second when Mike refused to meet his gaze again.

"Where's your _girlfriend_?" he couldn't help but bite the word out. Could not help the sting of jealousy that choked him, like bile rising up.

"She's gone," Scott said evenly, "she headed back to Italy a day or so ago. Didn't work out, ya know?"

"Why not? She seemed perfect for you," he answered sullenly, though hope sprung to life in the smallest flicker, deep in his belly.

"No, man. No she wasn't."

"She sure seemed like it. She was pretty," he chewed the word, "smart. Normal." His voice got quieter, he scarcely dared to look up into those fathomless eyes again, but he was dying to know what Scott was thinking up there.

When Mike finally dared to look up again, Scott met his gaze evenly, "she wasn't for me. Didn't feel like home, you know? Didn't feel real."

"So…why'd you come to me? I mean… why'd you come looking for me?"

"I sprouted wings, Mikey," he said, casting his eyes back to the road, trying to see what lay ahead of them.


	2. Chapter 2

Cht 2

"Where are we headed? Like, why south?" Mike peppered Scott with questions after climbing over the seat to settle himself on the passenger side.

"I wanna do something for you," Scott answered slowly, "but you're going to have to kick the coke first."

"What the hell, why? That's the only thing that helps me stay awake at all, you know that!"

"That's the thing though, Mikey," Scott said evenly. "I want to get you to a specialist who can help with those sleeping fits of yours. You'll have to get all the drugs out of your system first though and get clean, then they'll be able to help you."

"I don't know…," he did not want to say why else he needed drugs, but in the light of Scott's threat to strip it from him, he felt he might as well come clean with that at least. Maybe Scott would understand. "Scotty listen… I don't think I can get through some of those dates. Some of the real weirdos, you know? Not without something to _get_ me through it, right?"

"You're not doing any more dates," Scott said emphatically. And then he did the thing that made Mike want to promise him anything in the world. He took one hand off the steering wheel and reached over, clasping Mike's hand in his supple grip. Scott traced his thumb over the back of the other boy's hand.

That in itself was a balm to Mike's nerves.

* * *

They drove into the wee hours of the night, across the Oakland Bridge with its twinkling lights. He could see Alcatraz out across the water, and beyond it, the Golden Gate Bridge. He tried to get Scott to promise they could see the old prison in the day time, but he had no interest. They had both done enough time, he snarked.

Scott had their accommodations all taken care of, and he had yet to tell Mike where they were going. In his defense, Mike had yet to ask. They breezed through the city, windows down, listening to the night life teeming from Union Square all the way through Japantown before they headed north. He stopped and turned into the driveway of a stately old home, all weathered brick and ivy overlooking a large park.

"Here we are, Mikey," Scott said, drawing a breath, "home sweet home."

"We live here?" Mike asked agog.

"Well—my aunt Mattie does—and she's a real card, Mike," Scott said slowly as he eased out of the car. He had not called ahead, and wasn't too sure what to expect, but all the lights in the house were on even though it was nigh on two in the morning, and tinny jazz music blared through an open balcony upstairs.

Mike eased out of the car even slower than Scott. He knew Scott's family was loaded, but he hadn't expected the real luxury of old money. As they walked into a tiled foyer, he noted that that's exactly how it smelled—of old books and leather…and alcohol.

"Well if it isn't Portland's finest! What brings his lordship this far south?" rasped a voice from the landing above.

Mike and Scott swept into the middle of the foyer to see a brass blond head peeking over the top banister railing. Ash drifted down to them from her cigarette holder. From what Mike could tell, it was an ancient flapper who had seen better days, as attested by her feather headband all askew.

"Actually it's just me, Aunt Matilda!" Scott called up with a cheeky grin.

"Scotty!" she leaned, almost too far over the railing for Mike's judgement, and hacked out a laugh. "Oh aren't you a sight for these sore eyes. Who've you got with you honey—wait, let me come down," she staggered back, pulling a robe back up over her bony shoulders and lurched for an old iron elevator near her on the landing.

Aunt Mattie threw the lever forward and clung to the rail as it lumbered downward, rattling and clanging as it went. Scott simply smiled and shook his head, looking over his shoulder at Mike with raised brows as the elderly woman swaggered out of the gate.

"Aunt Mattie, this is my friend Mike," Scott said, placing a hand on Mike's arm. "Mike Waters."

"Friend, huh?" Sauced as she might have been, the old lady did not miss much. Her feather wavered as she cocked her head to her side. "Be careful of this one," she said, jerking her head at her nephew, "as I diapered him, I know exactly what he's working with," at this she narrowed her gaze, "and he'll tear you in two if you're _not_ careful."

"Y-yes ma'am," Mike managed to choke out, looking incredulously at Scott, who shook with silent laughter while she staggered between them to open two large wooden pocket doors.

"Would you boys like some hooch?" she queried, as she entered an oak-paneled dining room and fetched a large decanter from a sideboard on the opposite wall. "It's crystal clear and straight outta the bathtub!"

"Actually, Aunt Mattie, I think we need to crash. It's been a long drive."

"What a couple of amateurs," she said, pouring a finger into a glass for herself. "Scotty, you haven't gone respectable on me, have ya?" Without waiting for an answer, she linked arms with Mike and trudged back through the door headed for the elevator with him. "This boy's father," she told Mike, "is the biggest gimlet I ever laid eyes on. A full twenty years younger than me, and he acted twenty years older. I used to introduce him as my father for a laugh."

Mike felt completely nonplussed, and Scott didn't do a thing to help as he followed along behind them. He looked nothing but amused at his aunt. At a loss, Mike cast around for something to say, and said the first thing he blurted out—

"How'd you make liquor in a bathtub?"

Mattie screeched out a laugh and almost toppled to the ground. "Aren't you the cutest little thing? We used to make gin in the bathtub when every granny with her prayer book tried to shut down all the gin mills in town. I'd inherited by then, from my granny, and I turned this place into the best speakeasy north of Haight-Ashbury."

She escorted them down a plush carpeted hall and stopped outside the doorways in a wing off the elevator landing.

"So ah, do you two _friends_ need your rooms separate?" she said with a knowing lopsided grin.

"Ah no," Scott said smiling, "we'll conserve space."

She simply nodded, chortling, "you can have the double room down the hall your parents used to stay in. Come to think of it, Scotty, you might have been conceived in there!"

And for the first time, Mike had a chance to see Scott flustered and embarrassed.


End file.
